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Advanced Search Query Guide
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This guide will help you structure queries using the ‘Advanced Search’ option in the Media Cloud Search tool. The default simple search automatically helps to translate your query text to the proper syntax. Example queries are provided and written in [brackets]. The bracket symbol is not part of the query itself and should not be used in your queries.
Query Feature
Media Cloud
Wayback Machine
Single character wildcard?
"wom?n" works to match things like "women" or "woman"
"wom?n" works to match things like "women" or "woman"
Multiple character wildcard
"wom*n" or "wom*" works to match things like "women" or "woman"
"wom*n" or "wom*" works to match things like "women" or "woman"
Hyphens
"two-spirit" needs to be in double quotes
"two-spirit" needs to be in double quotes
AND/OR capitalization
need to be capitalized
need to be capitalized
Search titles only
specify the column by searching something like "article_title: biden"
specify the column by searching something like "title: biden"
Searching for an exact phrase
use double quotes to match an exact phrase like "unhoused person"
use double quotes to match an exact phrase like "unhoused person"
Regular expressions
not supported
not supported
"fuzzy" queries
query for "Biden~" to match any slight mispellings of his name ("Bidan", "Bidden", etc)
not supported
Proximity search
"woman killed"~10 will find stories where those words are within 10 words of each other
"woman killed"~10 will find stories where those words are within 10 words of each other
Default search
terms next to each other without boolean operators are assumed to be AND'd ("monkey banana" is "monkey AND banana")
terms next to each other without boolean operators are assumed to be AND'd ("monkey banana" is "monkey AND banana")
Negation
prefix the term with NOT or - to indicate you want matches that do not include the term; such as "gaza NOT hamas"
prefix the term with NOT or - to indicate you want matches that do not include the term; such as "gaza NOT hamas"
Language filter
add a "language:en" clause with the two-letter code (ISO 639-1)
add a "language:en" clause with the two-letter code (ISO 639-1)
Still have questions?
Send us an email at info@mediaecosystems.org or fill out our support form.